The communications director of the Ghana Football Association, Ibrahim Sannie Daara, has defended Black Stars coach Avram Grant, saying monitoring players abroad does not necessarily call for immediate invitation of new faces for national duty.

Grant was criticized last month for naming a 23-man squad consisting of ‘old faces’ after spending over three months away in Europe in the name of keeping a close eye on Ghanaian players.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that when you go and monitor players, you must come up with new ones,” Sannie explained to JoySports.

“Does it also mean that just because he has gone to monitor players, he must yank off all the players we already have?

“The key thing is that the evolving national team must be a team where if somebody is coming out of the squad, the person who comes in must be better than the one going out.

“Sometimes you go and monitor a player and you realise that he is not cut for the national team yet or the player is good but you[probably] have a better player in the squad.

“But we have said to him [Grant] to look internally [at the Ghana Premier League] because we have talents here and we also think that there are some other young players out there we can also look at.”

Players such as Atletico Madrid’s Thomas Teye Partey, Bologna youngster Godfred Donsah and Hamburg’s Gideon Jung have been reported to be on the radar of the Black Stars for a first cap.

Spain and Atletico Bilbao striker Inaki Williams and Timothy Fosu-Mensah of Manchester United and the Netherlands are also being pursued by the FA for a possible nationality switch.